How Homeownership Became the Engine of American Inequality

Re:How Homeownership Became the Engine of American Inequality by Retric on Tuesday May 09, 2017 @01:30PM (#14302103)

Savings are only part of the equation. Home ownership lowers income mobility by reducing the competitiveness of the labor market and increasing commuting costs.

Worse it promotes moving to areas with the maximum possible jobs which destroys smaller towns and city's while creating even worse congestion.

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Re:How Homeownership Became the Engine of American Inequality by kudokatz on Tuesday May 09, 2017 @01:55PM (#14302369)

> Home ownership lowers income mobility by reducing the competitiveness of the labor market

Yep. But I still bought anyways, even though houses are what I consider "bad investments" if looking at them in the abstract:

* high transaction costs * illiquid * concentrated * requires maintenance ...

But the calculation was that since the local market and job market for me are amazingly hot right now, it'd transfer my variable costs into fixed costs and be a cash transaction.

Still worth it in some cases.

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Re:How Homeownership Became the Engine of American Inequality by erroneousfunk on Wednesday May 10, 2017 @12:58PM (#14309705)

I rented until just recently (mostly 1 year or less, over 10 years -- lots of different places in the greater Boston area), and although I ran the numbers to make sure I wouldn't be doing anything too stupid, in the end it just came down to "I want to own my own home"

My spouse and I have done a ton of work on it, don't mind the maintenance issues, and we still get a kick out of just pointing to things and saying "that's ours!" (Okay, well... it's most the bank's. But still.)

I think "I'm sick of renting someone else's house" is a very non-negligible factor that's not often brought up in cost/benefit analyses like these.

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